Monday, April 25, 2011

Leucadia, the Next Soviet Poway?

All [Poway's government regulated housing] is highly concentrated in South Poway.

And the city is plunking these affordable housing projects near to or across the street from [our big box stores].

Hell, all the sidewalks end abruptly at Wal-Mart and yet the city says this is where people who are in wheelchairs can live independently etc.

So, the commercial environment is made for out-of-town shoppers with thir big rancho vehicles and yet the city keeps plunking residential low income projects there. Cheap workers for Wal-Mart! They should be grateful to hear those delivery trucks unloading at 2 a m near their bedroom windows. It means jobs. We also now have a big shopping cart problem. All the time, at pretty much all the projects but the newest one.

The one local school is now 50% kids on free or reduced price lunches. All there performance data is WAAAYYYYY lower than the other schools. The city hires a PR firm to say that affordable housing does not affect schools or property values.

Some of the projects look decent. But the people are all low-income. So they don't have people with other resources to intermingle with or network with. They are very isolated in these projects. Some even are on private streets, so other people cannot come in to them easily. There are some little tot lots, but they are only for the project kids, so they do not even intermingle with others on the playground.

Big issues are that the kids can't play with balls or out in front of the units. There are insufficient amount of play areas. Or nearby parks. Poway has very few parks and the ones they have are reserved for sports teams.

Poway has had long running management problems at these projects. Reportedly drug dealing, etc. There was a death in the back seat of a car at one last week. Not sure if it was a suicide or something less sinister. Some of the tenants do a lot of complaining. Some of their complaints are really without merit, but the people do not have a sense of being in charge of their own environment.

I remember once someone had some BIG stuff to tell me. It was that their board "illegally" used some fund to plant rose bushes. Sheesh! Who cares. Rose bushes improve the place.

[There is also complaints that some people are allowed to cut in the housing waiting lists.]

I have heard legitimate complaints from people complaining that the sheriff does not respond to reports of drug dealing in the area. I have heard repeated claims of people finding drug paraphernalia and taking it to the sheriff and the sheriff not really caring. They don't want to fill out a report and make the crime rate increase.

[The sheriffs] don't want to fill out a report and make the crime rate increase.

...You know, they ripped down the Cabrini Green projects in Chicago and rebuilt units with market rate housing and the poor together in the same units. They thought they would have a hard time getting the non-poor folks to buy into it, but they sold the units right away. It was the poor who balked over the idea. They had to give them lots of help learning how to live in a non-project with regular people. But Poway doesn't learn from anyone else's adventures. We are going with the build-a-ghetto concept. As long as it doesn't taint their north Poway schools or neighborhoods, they don't care. They don't even shop in Poway, they shop in Rancho Bernardo. So, they people who decide where to locate these projects don't have to live with it or deal with it.

The South Poway Residents Association was formed in part because their city was pushing all the low income housing into one area of their city and into semi-segregated complexes. The residents took action too late and too much momentum had formed. Some of the Association's founders moved.

Several years back when Encinitas City Manager Warren Schaffer left town because redevelopment was nixed here (during round 1), he went to Poway. Guess what happened there? I'd say greener pastures, but that would be 180 degrees off. More like greener pockets for a few. Then when round 2 of redevelopment came to Encinitas, guess who was invited to speak of it's benefits? Poway's Redevelopment Agency. Poway's lookin more like our Sister City than Amakusa.

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About Leucadia

Leucadia is a funky little beach community located in North San Diego county in southern California. Leucadia is the north section of the city of Encinitas.

English spiritualists settled the small coastal community of Leucadia in 1870, and are reputed to have danced, in diaphanous white robes in the little Roadside Park (Leucadia Blvd and Hwy 101).

The spiritualists are the reason so many of the streets are named after Greek gods and goddesses. Leucadia is Greek for "a sheltered place." Heritage Eucalyptus trees, planted in the 1880s, still grace the highway. When President Roosevelt passed through Leucadia in an open car during the Depression, local children climbed the Eucalyptus trees to wave to him.

Change happens slowly in this nostalgic little California beach town. In lieu of fast food restaurants and franchise chain stores, Leucadia has two miles of Mom 'n Pop businesses, and that's the way everyone likes it. The town war cry is "Keep Leucadia Funky."

Leucadia played an active role in the rebirth of the classic Highway 101 shield, restored in 1997, and was part of the successful 101 Campaign to have Highway 101 declared an historic route.

Leucadia is experiencing growing pains and culture clash in these first decades of the 21st century...

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